“Fireburn”: The Three Queens of the Virgin Islands
Three African‑Caribbean women on St. Croix stood at the forefront of a mass insurrection against the Danish government, demanding just wages and humane working conditions....
Category : Sistory
Black Women’s History
The Horrific Lynching of Mary Turner
Mary Turner was a young African-American woman, lynched on May 19, 1918, in Valdosta, Georgia, in a horrific manner. She was eight months pregnant at...
Her name was Redoshi: The last survivor of the Maafa in America?
Redoshi was born in modern-day Benin and abducted from her home aged 12 before being sold as a child bride. She was renamed Sally Smith...
Charity Still: Who twice liberated herself from the Maafa
Charity Still, the mother of William Still, twice liberated herself from the Maafa/Atlantic slavery with her children. After her first self-liberation, she was recaptured with...
Ona Judge: The First Lady’s personal maid who freed herself from bondage and was ‘Never Caught’
Ona Judge, known as Oney Judge Staines after marriage, was a bondwoman who worked on George Washington’s Mount Vernon labor camp/plantation, in Virginia. Beginning in...
Ten Iconic Black Women of the Maafa
“Slavery is not an indefinable mass of flesh. It is a particular, specific enslaved woman, whose mind is as active as your own, whose range...
Jackie Ormes: The first professional African American woman cartoonist
Jackie Ormes (August 1, 1911 – December 26, 1985) was born Zelda Jackson in a small town outside Pittsburgh. She was a self-taught artist who...
Anna Mac Clarke: A Military Pioneer
Anna Mac Clarke was the first African American woman to be a commanding officer of an otherwise all European regiment when the United States military...
Elizabeth Jennings Graham: A 19th Century Rosa Parks
Elizabeth Jennings Graham (March 1827 – June 5, 1901) was an African-American teacher and civil rights activist, who challenged segregation on public transportation, a full...
Ella Fitzgerald: The First Lady of Song
Ella Fitzgerald, known as the First Lady of Song, Queen of Jazz, and Lady Ella was an extraordinary jazz and song vocalist, who won 13...